On Feb. 11, 2015 students gathered in Whitehorse Hall to listen to Alex Alben, a
speaker from Humanities Washington about Privacy and Personality in the Digital
Age. At this lecture, Alben openly discussed with students about what they think
their rights to privacy are. Darby Throndsen, an EvCC Student said that she takes the mass media class online, and that attending this event was an “extra credit
opportunity, as well as an opportunity to come on campus.” The Clipper contacted
Alben to ask him questions related to his lecture.

Do you think that the digital age that we’re in right now is making human
more social or less social?

Digital media and digital technology are making people more social. These
technologies and these applications, they tap in to something very fundamental
about the human condition. People are distinguished by our sophistication and the
way we communicate more than any other species of animal, and we’ve built these
new tools to enable us to speak more frequently and more extensively to more
people, during more hours of the day than ever before. So, if that’s your definition of social, then I would have to say that this age is more social in terms of the volume of communication that is occurring, and the number of speakers who are participating.

Do you think that changing settings on your social media, like your Twitter
settings to private really change anything?

My perspective is that people do have certain tools to limit their exposure. The only
way to absolutely guarantee that you have no exposure that’s unintended, in terms
of the distribution of your personal information, is not to use the service at all.
People who choose to use Facebook or Twitter should use the privacy settings that
they have at hand.

Do you think that it is possible to have separate social media for personal life
and professional life?

It’s becoming increasingly hard for people to have different spheres of their lives on
social networks. Many people feel that LinkedIn is a service that is more business
oriented, and that Facebook is a service that is more recreational. But, the reality is
that the information that you put out on any serviced can be picked up and used and searched and your ability to keep that division between your business life and your private life is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

Where do you see the future of social media going within the next ten years or so?

Well the trend has been that as more people come online, more people participate in social media. Facebook now is over 1.8 billion users, worldwide…but these services are growing quickly. We’ll continue to see a very healthy growth in the participation of social media. Social media is going to change as people change and people value different things. We’ve seen that evolution already within the first ten years of the early stages of social media such as MySpace, that have transformed into different kinds of sights for personal expression. And I also think its important, and it will be more important to have an awareness of privacy that becomes much more built in the social networking experience.